First time I've ever asked myself that question. True. Unfortunately, the answer was yes, there was in fact a river. The water was streaming in from the (now flooded) garage, in from the window in the kids play room, and gurgling up from the floor drains in all the basement rooms. Suck.

To be fair, the house held its own for 12 hours. The rain was incredible and it had been coming down hard all day. By hard I mean it took a tree down on our street. Up until the neighborhood drainage system gave up, the only leaks were in a few windows. However, once the garage filled up, it came over the 4 inch barrier in the doorway and down the stairs into our basement.

I moved what I could up out of harms way but in the end there was so much water that I just stood there dumb-founded for a while.

I have pictures but I probably won't go to the trouble of posting them.

A few key learnings from the entire episode:

When water enters your house from the drains, don't stand in it. You don't know where it's been. My rookie mistake cost me a funky little rash on my foot.
If it rains for over ten hours straight, hard, get your crap out of the basement and the garage. In retrospect, that just seems like common sense.
When there is water in your house, mold will soon follow. And it did.